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Sirius worries he’ll get blind drunk and make a fool of himself at James’s stag party, but as it turns out, it’s James who ends up with his head in the toilet.
There's a single grimy bulb above them, casting the newsprint lined walls of the pub loo in bleak yellow light. Sirius sits beside James on the tile floor, watches him retch and gag. Eventually he reaches out with trembling fingers to loosen the knot of James's tie where it rests, too tight, at his bobbing throat. “Atta boy, Prongs,” he says gently. “Better out than in, I always say.”
James spits foam and flops back onto his arse, wiping his flush lips with the sleeve of his robes. Spit or sick glistens in the corner of his mouth, and maybe Sirius is not so reformed, because some deep buried part of himself still wants to lick it off. But he stays there, arms crossed over his knees instead, like a Good Boy. Hands to himself. “Sorry,” James says, glasses flashing as he squints up at that single yellow bulb. “Tonight was supposed to be fun.”
Sirius shrugs. “S’your night, mate. We can spend it however you want.”
James shakes his head, hauls himself to his feet with a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the sink. He rinses his mouth out, splashes water onto his faintly green cheeks. “You think I wanted to spend my stag party puking?” he asks, shooting a look over his shoulder, water dripping from his chin to the floor at Sirius’s feet. “M’not even—I haven't had that much to drink. It's embarrassing.”
Warily Sirius stands, keeping his distance, ignoring the telltale lurch in his own gut. He flushes the toilet with his foot and watches his best friend’s vomit swirl down the u-bend with watery, reproachful eyes. “Maybe it’s nerves,” he offers, unable to look at James.
But James has a way of making Sirius do even the things he doesn’t want to do. He has a way of making Sirius believe, all along, that he did want to do them. Without a word of warning James’s hand fists into the front of Sirius’s robes, spinning him around so they're facing one another with less than an inch between their lips. The sour smell of vomit under the burn of alcohol, James’s sweat and cologne all around them and Sirius has spent so many years forcing himself to not want James Potter that the desire, when it does hit, almost comes as a shock. I thought I killed you, he thinks helplessly. You’re supposed to be dead.
“Could be nerves...or maybe it’s regret,” James says, gaze locked on Sirius’s mouth.
An unbearable, searing second passes over them. Sirius sick with wondering, with wanting. But he chokes the ghost of it dead again. Lays it to rest, six feet under, where it belongs.
He shoves James off resolutely. “Come off it,” he snarls. “You love Lily. You want to marry her. You told me enough times, I would know.”
James looks wounded for a split second before his gaze hardens into a defensive mask. “Sirius—“
“No,” Sirius interrupts, desperate to not hear whatever James is trying to tell him here, drunk, the night before his wedding in a pub washroom at one in the morning. Too little, too late. He’s worked too hard at carefully purging his feelings to deal with this. Too many lonely nights spent dutifully rewriting his story, casting himself as the steadfast and loyal best friend instead of the spurned and heartsick almost-sometimes-lover. James can't muck it all up now. Too little, too late. “Don’t say it James, please,” he begs, reaching out and fixing his hands on James’s shoulders, shaking him, thumbs biting into too-hot skin. “You love Lily, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” James grits out.
“You’re going to marry her tomorrow, then. You two will grow old and happy together. You’ll have children. I’ll be their godfather. I’ll always be here with you, Prongs, I'll always be yours, but. But Lily—she's where your future is. You know that, we both do. ”
Another moment. James's hazel eyes swimming, a shade darker than usual, the single bulb rocking in a small circle above them somehow, sent into orbit as if knocked askew by the force of their feelings. The force of all that has been said, or not said in this tight tiled space, stinking of vomit.
“Right,” James says eventually, voice hollow. He reaches between them and for a moment Sirius thinks he’s going to touch his face, his mouth, but instead he only pushes his glasses up the bridge of his own nose. “You’re one hundred percent right. As usual.”
“As always,” Sirius snips, just to prove he can still be snippy. Relieved and a tinge wounded, He releases a ragged breath, and lets go of James. The bulb slows to near-stillness, nothing but a tremor making the shadows in his best friend’s face quake.. “Alright now, mate? Ready for another round?”
“Maybe not another round,” James says, grinning so carelessly it’s as if nothing at all has transpired here at all. “But I’m ready for the wedding. To be a married man.”
“Good,” Sirius says, ignoring the reflexive pang in his insides. He slings a determined arm around James’s shoulder, ruffles his sweaty hair, and steers him out of the loo. “We’re going to have a wonderful time at that wedding, the both of us. We’ll be smiling in every picture. I promise.”